The Devil’s Hands (Fukuzawa Kohaku Main Arc)

The Devil’s Hands (Fukuzawa Kohaku Main Arc)

Anime Opening (0:00-2:05)

Dark water dribbles through eaves and runoff ditches, converging as it pours down eerie patches of grass and dirt. In the glassy reflection of the light, a silhouette of a boy and an old man. The old man rests his hand on the boy’s shoulder and hands him something.

Worms writhe through the dirt, their shapes obscuring the image. A knife’s blade extends from the boy’s outstretched hand. The water drizzles into an open cavern, where pale white fingers caress the stream. An unseen entity laughs in a gentle, mirthless voice.

The camera streaks back up the water stream and locks onto the moon. The next Episode fades in…

Episode 1: Freak in the Streets (Kohaku, Kuroda, Kaoru)

“Sounds like we’re gettin’ close, Huck.”

“Or it’s getting closer to us.”

Held in the palm of his hand, Kohaku listens to the shrill and steady beep of the virtual pet. Each time, the beeps get a little closer together. On the screen of the device, a flash of bloody red color paints the edge, indicating the direction. There’s a Bleeding Zone that’s been wandering, leaving a sweeping wave of aggression in its wake. People punching each other out over sections of apartment complexes. Hissing and spitting like animals over real estate at farmer’s market stalls.

Worse, there’s been no discrimination. Not even the Idea World is safe. Innocent spirits have been hunted down and beaten mercilessly. Kohaku found no fewer than three kids who were tossed onto the street by a single parent just for eating their food. Delivering them safely to a shelter took more time than Kohaku would like. Fingers twitch, aching for the feeling of a knife in their grasp. He squeezes the device to anchor himself, leading his IDs where he thinks the zone is moving next.

The ID Gang. A crew of Awakened, most of them too weak to hack it on their own. Like coyotes, Kohaku banded them together. Three of them stride behind him, in their black leather jackets and their white hockey masks, wild hair spilling around the pale plastic. One carries a tire iron, another a board with nails punched through one end, and the third an airhorn filled with chili powder. They ain’t the greatest heroes, but if humanity wants to survive the new world, even the weak need to learn how to fight for their ideas.

“…punk. Think you’re too good for us?!” raised voices down a side street. Kohaku perks up like a wolf catching a trail, stalking into the gloom. His foot catches a discarded pop can, sending it clattering across the pavement. A cluster of three teenagers is gathered around a fourth, who looms above them like a monument. “Eh? Who the fuck are you?” one of the thugs steps forward, but his stance shifts the moment the other IDs creep into the alley behind their leader. “Oh. I get it.” Wearing a grin, the boy runs a hand through his wavy, greasy hair. “Nobody heard this territory belongs to the Gator Tooth Gang yet.” A jutting finger comes out, accompanied by the boastful leader’s other hand clicking open a switchblade.

“This is your one warning to get-”

“You should leave,” Kohaku’s voice cuts off the flaunting bully, making his jagged eyebrows twitch.

Breaking into an arrogant sneer, the punk spits on the ground. His hand shakes with rage. “You’re really gonna regret cutting me-”

“He is too good for you,” reaching into his coat, Kohaku pulls out a long, sharp chef’s knife. “Leave. Before I do cut you.” Its blade is stained dark, and the opposing gang leader visibly swallows down a lump of hesitation.

“H-he one of yours’, then?! Well what if I do- this!” spinning around, the greaseball tries to grab his erstwhile victim by the coat.

Takaishi Kuroda. Kohaku recognizes him from Higan. Anyone who’d seen him once would remember the mountain of a young man. Effortlessly, the would-be hostage shoves his attacker onto the ground. “Grab him!” the fallen leader’s command is the starting gun for violence.

Blood pulses through Kohaku’s veins, energizing his eager muscles. Twitch reflexes shoot him forward. Three shades of the streets follow in his wake, their weapons at the ready.

Opening with a spin kick, Kohaku catches the gang leader’s shoulder as he’s trying to crawl to his feet. With a satisfying pop, the hunter feels his prey’s shoulder pop out of its joint. Tasting blood in the air, he wears a wicked grin behind his mask. It takes all of his control not to drive the knife somewhere- instead, he uses the handle to strike his wounded foe in the chin. One of the IDs grabs the fallen leader and restrains him.

Kuroda has both of the other street toughs held by the face, as one swings hopelessly with his shorter arms. The other winds up and clubs the larger boy in the stomach with a bat. Kuroda’s eyes bug out as he grunts, but doesn’t let go.

An ID clobbers the batter in the back with the flat side of his board. Another grabs the last and spins him around, a loud wail heralding screams of pain as the delinquent grabs at his reddening, chili-powdered eyes.

All in all, it took less than thirty seconds to clean up.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

A shrill sound, drowned out by the moment of violence, now registers. Kohaku grabs his Tamagotchi to see-

It warns too late: Bleeding Zone Encroachment Initiating. “It’s right on top of us.”

On either side, the concrete walls of low-income tenements begin to distort. Faint patterns of erosion in the stonework ripple and run through one another, like writhing worms. Wounds open on the walls, shallow abrasions drooling black blood. A nearby dumpster creaks, its metal edges bent until they take on eerie shapes, like teeth around a monstrous mouth.

Pivoting on his foot, Kohaku orders the IDs behind him, “Get these guys out of here.”

“On it, Huck!”

The gang members heave the fallen delinquents onto their shoulders, scurrying to the other end of the alley. Shadowy shapes around their bodies hint at their weaker Idolons, trying to take form in the Bleeding Zone’s border.

“Hey. You should get out of here too,” only the massive Kuroda remains, eyes staring into the shifting terrain with the locked-on intensity of a deer in headlights. Kohaku’s bared teeth stretch into an annoyed grimace. Whatever. I’ll just have to keep an eye out for him.

Around Kohaku’s feet, a slithering shape carves itself from the air, swallowing the empty space to make itself real. Three dozen gleaming red eyes flicker to life, and the young man’s heart beats faster the moment his fingers brush the slick indigo carapace surrounding him. Satisfaction and anticipation, like an addict who just dropped his tablet of choice, waiting for the trip to kick in. Voice shaking, he asks, “You ready-”
”-for the real hunt?” the Idolon’s spine-tingling growl finishes Kohaku’s thought.
“Always!” they echo, together.

Kohaku presses a button on his Tamagotchi, and a ripple runs through the Bleeding Zone. Warping textures begin to stabilize, and a surging strength runs through his body. It’s like a light piercing his skin from the inside of his blood vessels, shining through the world. Crisscross streaks of his mortal rivers can be seen beneath the surface of his exposed hands, as if his skin had turned translucent.

Familiar shapes appear at the mouth of the alley, silhouettes against sunlight that doesn’t strike surfaces the right way. Frames, coats and haircuts shifting between a dozen different stereotypes, with glowing yellow eyes glaring at soon-to-be victims. “Shit,” one of the delinquent-shaped entities says in a voice that is half growl and half howl, pouring out a word salad of trash talk: ”It’s a get ready for the beating time.”

”Too good for us…?” a hanger-on shade accuses, riding the tailfeathers of his imagined leader. Tongue lashing out like a reptile, tasting the air, the Idea samples the flavor of lingering compatible Idea Material in the air. More afterimages multiply around them, the perfect picture of a delinquent mob.

Enemies incoming: 「Idea: Gang Violence」

Bodies pour into the alley. Hairs on the back of Kohaku’s neck stand on end, animal instinct calculating the risks. Our back is not to a wall. A long as we keep the escape route behind us open, we’re safe.
For some measure of the word.

Sweeping a massive tail tipped with crown-like spines, Tai plows over the first wave of violent spectres back out onto the street. Their bodies splatter, then blend and reform. Already, a new wave has charged in while the first puts itself back together. Beneath them, the pavement recoils in ripples like water, then stills itself stubbornly. Suddenly, the worm’s eyes gleam. ”Dear Haku,” Tai’s voice begins to rumble in worry. Before the thought can be completed, bludgeons flash against the hard skull that it wears as a helmet. A crowd rushes the worm like waves crashing on a shore, surrounding its large body in the enclosed space of the alley. Arms stretch out to cover the worm’s many eyes.

Every impact of their shadowy weapons can be felt on Tai’s skin. The stinging of gnats, each individual in this mob is pathetic for the level of Idea they represent, but together… More just keep coming. Too many to reliably track one at a time. Kohaku grabs onto Tai’s flank as the Idolon whips around to throw off its attackers, riding the momentum to deliver a spinning bicycle kick to the heads of their surrounding foes.
Enough room to breathe. Finally. Flipping himself onto Tai’s back, Kohaku balances on his feet, one arm gripping a carapace ridge, the other wielding his knife to hack at the fingers of the mob.

That’s when he sees it. Is this what Tai was trying to warn me about?

Out of the air around Kuroda, a dozen hands erupt like sprouting plantlife. Skinless tubes of muscle and bone interlock their fingers, forming a skeletal lattice around a mannequin’s spine. Silken white skin slides up out of the mottled, stained gray of the pavement below, hugging the construct’s frame like a torn suit of wrestling tights. Kuroda’s eyes remain set in a glare, his hands balled into fists and put up in a practiced martial arts stance. He doesn’t speak to command the Idolon, but it moves.

With a motion of one gargantuan, collaborative arm, the newly formed Idolon sends a swathe of the crowd scattering, splashed upon the ground like water in the crashing corner of a wave pool. They split down the middle and try to surround it, two pseudopods of a primitive single-cellular life form. But the monstrous arms unfold from one another and begin engaging in a half dozen separate fistfights at once, to ward them away from its charge.

Kuroda is Awakened. That’s a relief, it saves me the trouble.

The gang leader remains looming at the mouth of the alley, watching without a single concern as Tai and the arm-thing thrash his endless goons into paste. If the entire thing is one entity, mending itself like a giant ooze, then the core has to be in that one! Salivating against the plastic of his mask, Kohaku watches the wobbling outline. Smugly standing, hands in pockets, not even an attempt at defense-

Wild grin twisting back on itself, Kohako realizes something is wrong. “Tai!” voice pitching up an octave, brimming with barely constrained energy, Kohaku calls down to the worm below. “What were you on about?!”

”The street!” Tai’s voice hollers over the jeering voices of the Idea all around them. ”Resists Transmute!”

And if it’s resisting, that means-

It’s not terrain. Kicking off the wall of one off the apartment buildings, Kohaku knocks Tai’s body out of the way just in time to avoid a concrete spike that surges out of the ground, guillotining the space they were just in.

Beneath and around the Idea of the gang leader, the pavement is like a living carpet of faces contorted into ugly expressions, and the edge of its influence creeps further into the alley, then up the walls. Tendrils of its influence have already run past Tai and Kohaku, attempting to encircle them. Eyes flashing, Tai attempts to seize control of the terrain and press back the influence with Tranmutation- a losing struggle against the specialized power of the encroaching Idea. Where the two territories clash, the stone buckles, cracks and churns over itself.

Beepbeep! Beepbeep! Beepbeep! The hammering heart of the Bleeding Zone is right in front of him. Alive, and moving. It was all a smoke show. A diversion by two symbiotic hunters, intrinsically linked.

Enemies incoming: 「Idea Fusion: Gang Violence//The Mean Streets」

“Shit! SHIT! Hey!” voice cracking, wild with panic, Kohaku slices through a shadowy hand grabbing at his jacket. Twisting around on Tai’s back, he shouts at Kuroda, “Takaishi!” A flash of confusion across the mountain’s face as his name slips from behind this stranger’s mask, “Get your shit together, fall back, now! There’s one in the terrain!”

One of them gets a grip on Kohaku’s foot, and his grip slips. Slammed back first into the pavement, Kohaku wheezes as the wind is knocked out of him. The ground opens up beneath him, forming into a grotesquerie of a human mouth, teeth closing in from both sides.

Kohaku grabs the jaws with his arms and strains against the weight of the stone, holding them apart. The light inside arms burns brighter through the world, and with a primal scream he stretches the mouth open. A mob is waiting. They stomp through the opening, kicking his exposed stomach, grabbing his flailing legs.

”Get down!”

Hearing Tai’s warning, Kohaku releases his grip and curls himself up into a ball. The stone mouth closes around him, in the same moment as a transmuted flashfire ignites the air outside. A few wisps of flame curl through the teeth and singe at Kohaku’s eyebrow.

The space closes in, claustrophobically trying to crush him. Bracing himself, Kohaku kicks several teeth out and grabs hold of the spaces between, forcing the jaws open again. Outside, the Gang Violence has been reduced to a smoldering puddle and scattered individuals, struggling to pull back to its core.

Bracing his hands and feet against the edges of the mouth, Kohaku launches himself out into the air like a slingshot. As he spins, Tai’s head lunges beneath him, and Kohaku grabs on. Drawing in a breath to bark a new order, Kohaku suddenly chokes on the air, throat clamping shut. The feeling of teeth on his windpipe, trying to tear it out…

Below, the face in the pavement has extruded out and seized Tai’s underside in its jaws. Hands reaching up instinctively to pry open teeth that aren’t there, Kohaku slips against his Idolon’s carapace and slides down its back, landing in a sprawl at the crook where ‘body’ and ‘tail’ vaguely differentiate.

You can do this. You can do this.

Repeating the mantra inside his head, Takaishi Kuroda keeps his shoulders squared and his stance loose, watching his disgusting projection twist itself in uncanny angles that send his stomach into knots. How he hates having to look at it… a grotesque slab of violence, just what everyone sees when they look at him. If this is the core of his being, are they right, and he the one who’s wrong?

Maybe it’s time you give up. Stake a claim, make THEM join YOU. There’s no feeling like a gangster’s power.

Stop. Shut it out. You can do this. You can do this.

It’s not common Kuroda finds himself in a Bleeding Zone without his comrades, and his feet feel like blocks of ice. He fights back the negative self-talk clawing into his head from the enemy Idea. As the internal struggle continues, one of the silhouettes manages to angle around his Nameless guardian. With a practiced motion, Kuroda raises his arm to turn aside the impact of a phantasmal golf club. When it strikes his arm, even in a glancing blow, vicious pain blossoms through his bone. Delivering a cross-counter that should shatter a jaw, he’s only just able to shove the monster away by its face.

Even for a monster like him, the basest Idea Worlders are superhuman. One of Nameless’ hands grabs the imaginary gangster’s head and squeezes, popping it like a ripe grape. Kuroda’s stomach churns. Why do these have to look so human…

“Takaishi!” Hearing his name, Kuroda jerks up. One of the masked delinquents who’d jumped his latest would-be recruiters, riding on the back of a giant worm monster like it’s a damn rodeo. How does he know- “Get your shit together, fall back, now! There’s one in the terrain!”

“In the-” something clamps around Kuroda’s foot. He looks down, where a stone fist has grabbed onto his foot. It squeezes, and the feeble protection of his gardening boots collapses inwards, sending a spike of pain and panic punching through his chest. Emerging beside the hand, a leering face somewhere between a human and an ape molds out of the stone. It stretches out on a neck too long and thin for it, and Kuroda stumbles back, falling over. The back of his head strikes the ground, making his ears ring and his eyes sparkle with dots. The wicked face looks down at him and gnashes its jaws, then it lunges like a striking snake.

Flickering into existence, a flash of red strikes the feeble neck and cracks it open with the echoing sound of hollow metal. Winding up their tire iron with blinding speed, the figure in scarlet motorcycle gear whips the stone head into the stratosphere. “You, who threaten the innocent!” the figure calls out in a wild, female voice. She stomps on another face beginning to form, and with another swing of her iron shatters the hand gripping Kuroda’s foot- cracked, probably broken. “This rose will drive its thorns into your wicked heart!” The woman stands stark against the sky, pointing an accusing finger at the shadow still at the mouth of the alley. Red flower petals drift through the air around her, leaving Kuroda in awe. “Face Scarlet Senshi!”

Enter Combatant: 「Scarlet Senshi」

Restraining a decidedly unmanly whimper behind his teeth, Kuroda drags himself backwards. When he tries to put weight on the foot to stand, his entire leg gives out, and he can see the Nameless Idolon suddenly buckle from sympathetic strain, dropping to one knee.

”Get down!” A guttural voice cries warning, and the scarlet hero suddenly throws herself over Kuroda’s prone form with desperate abandon. A rush of heat floods the alleyway, as the air above them ignite in an instant. The crimson bloom of the fire wraps around Nameless and curves over their huddle without igniting them, but Kuroda can still feel the blistering heat on his skin.

“Are you alright?”

It takes Kuroda a second to register that someone is talking to him. “I-” his voice is ungainly, shrill from the pain, “My foot.” The scarlet-clad woman nods and helps him limp away from the fighting. Looking over his shoulder, Kuroda surveys the wreckage of the battlefield. Nameless has already compensated for the lost foot, spawning a living crutch out of a chain of arms. They catch, deflect and pummel statuesque body parts extruding from the walls and the ground in all directions with impossible multitasking. Limbs bulge with even greater force- muscles stretch the skin so far it seems they’ll burst like overfilled balloons, each of Nameless’ punches enough to crack and shatter Idea-enforced stone.

The molten remains of the gang members simmers in an inky slurry on the ground, and the worm-rider is crumpled in the crook of his Idolon’s tail, gripping his throat. Stone limbs are grasping the beast from multiple angles as it thrashes helplessly, and a set of giant concrete jaws are clenched on its neck. “He… he needs…”

“Fear not, I will be there in a flash!” Scarlet Senshi, as she called herself, sets Kuroda on the seat of a bright red motorcycle. When did a motorcycle get here? “You know how to ride?”

He nods.

“It’ll get you as far as the edge of the Zone. Go! … And know that you fought bravely!” Beneath the seat, Kuroda can feel the engine roar to life. He slumps over the handlebars and lets it carry him away.

Relief settles in Scarlet Senshi’s chest as she watches Kuroda-san’s back zoom down the alleyway on her bike. Now that he’s out of harm’s way, she can focus on the incursion. Twisting around, she assesses the situation.

The unknown factor is disabled, grappled by the second Idea. It’s choking him, meaning time is short. Nameless is holding its own. If Kuroda-san leaves the Zone by accident, that front will disappear and more of the Idea’s focus will come at her from behind. Also he’d go flying when the bike vanishes… Focus, my little Scarlet Pimpernel.

Easiest way to force a grappler to let go is a low blow to the vitals, but it would take too long to break her way to the core of the street itself. So she’ll hit a softer target…

Broadening her stance, Scarlet Senshi kicks off against the pavement and vanishes in a flurry of petals, reappearing behind the leader of the shadow gang- its core. “I am judgement, and your blooming is nigh!” she cries out triumphantly. The delinquent’s head spins around just in time for his two yellow eyes to be split down the middle by her tire iron, carving its way down his body. Whipping it aside, Scarlet Senshi looks at the pulsing mass beating at its center. She snatches the core in her hand and holds it over her head. “Enemy of justice! Release your victim, or see your ally in wickedness crushed before your eyes!”

The crawling chaos of carven faces turn towards Scarlet Senshi, witnessing her coup de grace. Hesitation twitches in their vicious eyes, but their limbs retreat from Nameless and reorient themselves towards her. The jaws of the largest face, clamping the worm’s throat, throw it to the ground. ”Release,” a gravelly, grating voice demands from behind a half dozen coarse throats. ”Release!”

“With pleasure,” having no more reason to hold the blackheart hostage, Scarlet Senshi squeezes until it pops, dispersing into black smoke and leaving a sludgy residue in her hand. The inky remains are swiftly slurped up by her ring, which pulses with a faint uptick in power.

The stone faces gape their jaws and release a grinding cacophony of rage and despair. Their cascade is sliced through by the shrieking cry of a human voice. “You bastard!” a hoarse yell shakes the Idea out of its outrage, and the heads turn inwards to two figures at the center off the infested alleyway. The delinquent, wearing a hockey mask straight out of old American horror flick. From the slats around his mouth, flecks of frothy glowing (concerning…) saliva drip down onto the pavement. His hands are shaking, radiating the same bright white light (concerning…). Beside him, the worm-like Idolon coils itself up like a spring as if anticipating something.

Reaching to his side, the Awakened grabs his Idolon’s skull (helmet?). “I’m going to rip out your guts and use them to make udon, you overgrown sidewalk!” Completely losing his cool, he screams suicidally at the Idea he’s straight in the center of. Grabbing her iron in both hands, Scarlet Senshi prepares to leap into the fray, but the worm Idolon launches itself upwards like a spring.

From its back, streaks of energy unfurl into a pair of butterfly wings. The sun’s rays shine through their translucent film for a moment before they disappear, and for a moment the light off the sun goes with them. In that second, the only light is a brilliant sheen of golden soulfire surrounds the Idolon as it channels its life force into energy. The Awakened shouts, “Taiyō o Korosu!”
”Star Breaker!”

The Awakened delinquent spins in the air, swinging his Idolon by the face like a massive whip as the sun reappears behind them. Air displaced by the swing thunders past Scarlet Senshi, her scarf flapping in the sonic boom. She sees the gleaming of the crown-shaped blades at the tip of the worm’s tail. An Idea Slayer.

When the strike impacts the back alley, an explosion of physical force and Master-typed thaumaturgy sends shrapnel flying in every direction. The concrete ignites in soulfire from the lash as the Idea Slayer turns its buried core into sashimi. If not for Kaoru’s tinted visor, she’d be momentarily blinded. Cracks spread through the Bleeding Zone and it explodes into fragments, dying alongside the Idea maintaining it.

A burst water line sprays violently into the air from the crater left behind, spanning the entire alley. A metal dumpster at the edge of the impact crater tilts precariously, threatening to fall in. Above, at least thirty feet in the air, the delinquent responsible hangs by his hands from one of the adjacent apartment building’s balcony walkways. Kaoru watches him drag himself up and over, then disappear from sight. Internally, she is already logging details and storing them away in mental filing cabinets.

“… Kuroda-san..!” she hisses under her breath in realization. Running to the edge of the crater, she carefully leaps between pieces of rubble and gives chase down the alley. He’s probably going to have some nasty road rash if he was going too fast when the Zone collapsed…

The IDs stand over three high school delinquents, on their knees with burlap bags over their heads. The tough guys, now reduced to scared children, are trembling and awaiting the worst case scenarios flooding their minds. Spinning the confiscated switchblade between his fingers, Kohaku looks down at them, panting. Teeth-marks bruise his throat, and every breath makes them sting.

“The Gator Teeth,” voice still trembling with the energy of potential violence, Kohaku spits out the name. “I could really go for knocking out a few more teeth right now. Until you’re spitting blood, you inferior wastes of air!” He stomps the ground in front of their leader, who whimpers and tries to back away, falling onto his ass. Taking a few long breaths, Kohaku hands the switchblade to someone else. He’d rather not have it in his hand any longer. Someone’s hand accepts it. He’s not sure who. Everything is still in tunnel vision.

“P-please, I have a little sister! She- she needs me!” the sniveling greaseball whines.

Exhaling, Kohaku feels the hammering in his chest begin to calm. “Luckily for you, I believe that even trash can become something useful,” he sighs out the words, voice taking on a calm that’s more unsettling for following the violence that so shortly preceded it. “You want to protect this sister of yours’?”

“I… y-yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“…”

“Name. Now.”

“A-Ayako.” Silence hangs after the name, until the thug figures out on his own: “Yuki Ayako. Please, don’t hurt her. I- It’s me who pissed you off, right? I’m the one who came on your territory!”

“Who gives a damn about territory,” Kohaku squats over the fallen thug and takes off the burlap, looking down at him with a tilted head. Eyes glare through the street tough’s façade from behind a white mask. “If you’re telling me the truth, I’m going to teach you how to keep the ones you love safe. I’m going to teach you about the things that threaten them.” A baffled look stares back up at Kohaku. “And if you ever, ever use what I teach you to betray me… then I’ll cut your throat. Understand?”

“I… understand? I-I understand.”

Dragging the thug back to his knees, Kohaku reaches around to cut his hands free. Then, he offers a handshake. A clammy, trembling hand slides itself into his own. “Welcome to the ID Gang, Mr. Yuki.”

Episode 2: Worm in the Sheets (Kohaku, Kaoru, Kenji, Marisa)

Dragging out another long length of beige linen bandage, Kohaku leans forward. His arms wrap around the broad trunk of his partner’s body, the bare skin brushing against Tai’s chitinous exterior. Filmy residue sticks to him, and quickly dampens the bandages where they hug the worm’s body. Coil by coil, Kohaku wraps closed the jagged, teal-bloodied tooth marks. The grossly oversized mark of a clamping human mouth.

”This is not necessary.”

Smiling to himself, Kohaku rubs his head into Tai’s side. The slime mats his hair to the side of his head. “I know.” Blood loss does not affect Idolons the same way it does a frail human body. Tying off the final length of cloth, he pulls back. Sticky trails drag behind his arms, drip like gooey cheese and then fall away. Kohaku doesn’t mind at all.

”I know you know.”

Tai’s helmet sits on the floor nearby, a carpet stained by worm trail. Kohaku stares into the face beneath. Three large red orbs, perfect ruby spheres that reflect his face back to him in crimson distortions. Their internal light flickers as Tai blinks at him. Belo the eyes is a broad ringed mouth like a leech, surrounded by layers of vicious teeth. Under the carapace armor, Tai’s skin is the color of exposed muscle, the same raw, visceral physicality so many Idolon possess. It’s the most beautiful face Kohaku has ever seen.

”Thank you, Haku.” The voice doesn’t match the rhythmic contortions of the Idolon’s mouth. Somehow, the inhuman movements warp sound waves into human speech. A deep, slow, rumbling growl, but crystal clear Japanese. Maybe it’s all a trick, like a Tongue of Babel, by which all who walk the Idea World can understand one another’s meaning.

“It’s the thought that counts.”

It is. Looking into his Idolon’s eyes with the knowledge that the gaping wounds are properly bandaged, Kohaku feels a profound calm. Every manic twitch in his body has gone still, every screaming impulse in his head has gone silent. In their shared moment of quiet, the wounds begin to close in real time. The bruises on Kohaku’s throat, an echo of Tai’s, fade away.

Reaching up, Kohaku cups the worm’s face with a tiny human hand and leans in to plant a kiss on its ‘cheek.’

”You have been angrier.” Frowning, Kohaku holds his head beside Tai’s and breathes out a heavy sigh.

“I’m not angrier.”

”Less… in control, then. Never used to waste words on anger.” Lunging forward, Kohaku bites onto the rubbery flesh of Tai’s face. The worm is startled. Its long tail, laid and wound throughout the second floor, twitches. Fish-like fins flick down its body. Kohaku keeps digging his teeth in deeper, until he feels the faint impression in his cheek. Then, he finally lets go, a trail of saliva and slime hanging between them. ”What was that?”

The indent has already faded by the time Kohaku licks his lips. Umami, a sharp hit like squid ink. “Only I’m allowed to give us raba baito,” he states.

Steam runs out into the room as the door of the second-floor bathroom opens. “Get a room you two,” a tall, thin teen slinks out. He’s built like a streetlamp and about as stooped, wearing a towel each around his waist and his hair. Uesugi Aida, a social reject expelled from Higan Academy for selling booze on campus, currently being homeschooled by his parents while they look for another school that’ll take him.

Kohaku responds flatly, “This is our room.”

“Yeah, but you got the hot water.” Behind Aida, a rolling, cartoonish cloud tumbles into the room. Twirling inside the gray mass, an amphibian shape swims through the air around the ceiling, leaving beads of warm moisture on the walls. The clouds peel back to reveal bundle of frog heads with large, bushy eyebrows. Amagaeru, an Idea born of the association of frogs with rain and good fortune.

“Consider finding your own, Takari,” leaning back onto his cushion, Kohaku reaches under his ratty, moth-eaten kotatsu to fish out a small guidebook. He flips through the pages of urban myths to a page with a large, blank spot in the middle. The spirit sweeps down through the air and plants itself inside the pages, the animated image of the frogs settling on top of one another and closing their eyes for a nap.

“No sense of humor, Fuku-senpai,” offering a slouching shrug, Aida slides open the door and leaves the room. Kohaku can hear his footsteps going down. Tai’s tail flexes, and its tailfin drags shut the door left carelessly open.

Pushing up from the cushion, Kohaku crosses the second floor. It’s one large room, save for the small washroom. Apart from the old kotatsu, the room contains a kitchen counter and sink (the water doesn’t run), a stove (with no power), and a refrigerator (till no power). The floor is all wood tiling, squeaky boards that complain when Kohaku moves over them.

Throughout the room, Tai’s tail is uncoiled, lazily consuming as much floor space as possible. ”What is raba baito?” the worm asks, while Kohaku picks his way to the refrigerator.

Clasping the refrigerator handle, Kohaku leans back and smiles. “A gaijin concept, mostly. It is a bite to mark your lover.”

Tugging open the dead machine, Kohaku squats, feeling the cool air on his face. Clustered in the bottom of the refrigerator are a colony of Yukimarimo, tiny, living balls of snow and ice. They became common urban sightings around Bleeding Zones last winter. Reaching out a hand, Kohaku strokes their backs gently, and they murmur like small animals. Each of them produces a very faint aura of cold, but when clustered together they can chill a small room. Yukimarimo prefer small, cool, dark places, so the ID refrigerators have been an excellent habitat for them.

Collecting a few ingredients from the stockpile, Kohaku lays them out on the counter. A package of rice, a series of filled glass bottles of sake, mirin and soy sauce, a carton of eggs, and the slabs of dark meaty heart-meat left behind by the Mean Streets. Once the scarlet girl left, Kohaku had returned to claim his spoils. Unfortunately, the guts (a broken water line) hadn’t proved adequate for an udon recipe, but Kohaku takes pleasure knowing that his threat will be carried out in spirit. “Can you pass me my bag?” he asks. The end of Tai’s tail hefts Kohaku’s backpack from near the door and deposits it by his feet. “Artigato, Tai.”

”You are welcome.”

Kohaku lays out his portable kitchen set on the counter. He slots the portable grill, intended to be used over a campfire, above the sink. A cutting board, on which he places the slabs of meat. His knife set, minus the stained blade. That one has been to far too many foul places to be used for cooking, so it will just have to be satisfied with its role gathering ingredients. Drawing one from its sheath, Kohaku begins deftly slicing the Idea-meat into smaller cubes.

”I enjoy watching you cook.”

It coaxes out another easy smile. “I enjoy cooking for you.”

“What a stunning shot. Uncanny in its liminality. A world without humans.”

This section of forbidden zone has escaped the worst of the destruction and dilapidation. A cookie cutter residential area, with every identical home gone dark. One hundred identical siblings, stillborn from the womb. Their figures stretch across the evening horizon. Patches of overgrown grass have taken control of the pitifully small yards, flourishing where people no longer trim them to fit neighborhood association standard length.

It's a squatter’s dream, and there are surely more than one family or gang calling this place their home, legal rights or not. Only one of them is bold enough to have lights in the windows. Not the glaring yellow of artificial light, but the red glow of oil lanterns. “The final bastion of society, a lone light in the black…” Kenji narrates to himself, camera clutched to his chest and bearing witness to the scene in front of him.

”This is it-this is the-zone,” Tokiwa-san’s voice patches in through his earbuds. ”A constant low level-bleed.”

The two-story structure looks normal, but curious shadows flit and dance through the grass, which remains perfectly still. The only sheafs not to rustle in the wind that blows through every other yard on the street. Raising his camera, Kenji peers through the lens. It’s there, surrounding the home like a faint halo, the light that lingers after you stare at your hand for too long against a stark white wall. On the second story, there’s a human face glinting in the window.

Turning the zoom function, Kenji narrows in on the face in the window. Pale skin burnt orange-red by the lantern illuminating him from below. Matted hair pressed against his face, wet forehead, and crazy eyes. “So intense…” Flashes of metal glint in his hand, a knife chopping through something.

“A cannibal cult lurking in the forgotten corners of the city,” Kenji whispers under his breath, brainstorming ideas. “Would they invite me to dinner, or invite me to be dinner?” The young filmmaker licks his hips. “Found footage…?” He lets his hands jitter, shaking the camera around. The flip-screen goes fuzzy, and a bright (𖦹ᯅ𖦹) appears. “Haha… sorry, Tokiwa-chan. Let’s get closer,” twisting the zoom knob back, Kenji lowers the camera to his chest and creeps down the street.

Ghosts of suburban life stand at either side of the street. A maze of middle-class houses on the edge of the city, abandoned after a sweeping zone destroyed by the riots tore them off the greater bulk. Now it’s impossible to reach this district without passing through a forbidden zone, relegating them to the same fate. Many of the houses closer to the slum have broken windows and looted insides, but out here there are more still intact. The intact ones are worse. Like something unnatural warded off the looters.

Kaoru can’t blame them, though. Walking so deep into this place where people should be, but aren’t, makes her feel like something is watching over her shoulder. And she knows all too well… something just might be.

People in old, American-style hockey masks. It’s a striking descriptor, and one that yielded Kaoru plenty of information at the rumor mils. One of the fresher delinquent gangs in Kageoka, calling themselves the Ideal Destroyers. Most curious is that they’ve spread the shorthand of ID, and claim to be able to grant power to the powerless. The idea that there’s a gang out here spreading Idolons for clout is a terrifying prospect, not just for the obvious danger, but for the secrecy of the Idea World.

So here she is, alone in her Scarlet Senshi outfit, walking through one of the most unsettling places she’s ever been- in the real world.

Clutching the tire iron in her hands like a protective totem, Kaoru draws nearer to the lone beacon in the center of the darkening expanse. Burning lanterns light up the windows, and a white hockey mask hangs from the doorknob like Halloween night. “They don’t have much subtlety,” she whispers to herself, just to hear the sound of her voice.

Stalking into the small yard, Kaoru feels a shudder run through her body, and a familiar presence wrapped around her ring finger. It’s extremely faint, a Bleeding Zone with such a low grade that it barely feels like one at all. There are small inconsistencies, though.

The grass doesn’t sway. It leaves no shadows where the lanternlight washes past it. There is a full moon visible in the dark pink sky, even as the sun has yet to fully set- and tonight is a waxing moon.

Voices bark raucously inside. Carefully, Kaoru positions herself between one of the first-floor windows. She lifts her helmet just enough to let her left ear free, listening with strained ears.

The first thing Aida hears when he saunters into the first floor living room is, “Oh my God. Put on pants!” Marisa covers one side of her face with the hood of her track jacket and looks away. There’s a bright green Game Boy Color sitting in her lap, bleeping and blooping the sounds of Pokemon Pinball.

“What, a man can’t wear a towel in his own damn house?” adjusting the towel around his waist, Aida flops onto a ratty couch they dragged out of one of the other houses for more seating space. The first floor is a mishmash of mismatched furniture. Chairs, tables, couches, cushions, a big pink minifridge covered in unicorn stickers. Everything a bunch of hardcore teens need for their hangout.

“This isn’t your house, you have a house,” Marisa protests.

“That’s my parents’ house!”

A pink and white houserobe with a snake-scale pattern running down it, and two large red eyes on either side of the neck ruff, has been thrown over the back of one of the armchairs. The garment wriggles, and its eyes blink. “He thinks they think he’s at a part-time job, but they really think he’s dealing drugs.”

“Hey, shut your mouth, traitor!” Aida raises his fist and shakes it at his Idolon, Tsuchinoko. “Make yourself useful and get me a beer!” The snippy article rolls its eyes, but peels itself from the chair with a crackle of static and flops to the floor, slithering to the bright pink refrigerator. One of the arms reaches up and tugs it open, and the sleeves begin to slide beer cans from among the little snowballs onto its back.

“Anybody else want a beer?” the thing helpfully asks, always happy to volunteer effort for someone else. Aida rolls his eyes back at its passive aggression.

A pair of boys is seated at a card table, playing poker with a tall, red-robed tengu with a face like a plucked penguin- Kokancho. One of them, a hefty guy with a shaved head, raises his hand. “I’ll have one.” Okabe, the Awakened of the large bird-man.

Across from Okabe is ‘Takoyaki,’ a large-nosed boy with bony limbs who can never seem to put on as much muscle as he wants to. They call him Takoyaki because his Idolon form has the head of a giant octopus. He remains intensely focused on his hand of cards, ignoring the offer of alcohol. An illegal prize pot of cash sits between them.

Tsuchinoko slithers past Okabe, who reaches down and plucks one of the beer cans. A mischievous sleeve slides one onto Marisa’s chair beside her, then the Idolon carries the last to Aida. Bending down, he grabs the can and pops the cap. “Thanks, you’re pretty useful for a rug.”

“Thanks, you’re pretty useless for a human.” There’s a round of laughter from the poker table, and Marisa chuckles. She looks at the beer can and shrugs, cracking it open.

In spite of their jabs, Tsuchinoko slithers up onto Aida’s lap, and he pats the coat as he sips his beer. The Idolon is already looking drowsy from being active in the miniscule Bleeding Zone around the ID hangout, and Aida can feel his eyelids drooping in sympathy. “So what do your- er, what does your mom think you’re doing right now?” he asks Marisa, carelessly dancing around the subject of her father.

The girl wears a tight frown. “She doesn’t really care what I do,” looking down into the grassy-smelling can, she takes a test sip and recoils. “Eugh.”

“It grows on ya.”

Not acknowledging the comment, Marisa sets it on the table beside her. “All I hear when she’s actually home is… bitching about work. Like, does she not even care dad is missing?” The girl swears like it’s her first time, still awkward shooting the shit with the gang boys.

“Maybe she’s trying to pretend it’s not real,” Okabe suggests, in his deep voice. “If she thinks you’re missing too... it could really hurt her.”

“Well, she’s the adult. So she should get it together.” After staring at her hands in her lap, Marisa reaches over for another sip of the beer. Judging by her face, it hasn’t grown on her yet.

“I’ll have to see if I can get my hands on something tastier next week,” Aida comments, drinking down another gulp of his own. “At least we got a proper fridge now. Nothing worse than piss-warm beer.”

“I pray I never have to know the flavor,” Marisa says, and Aida raises his can in a cheers to the sentiment. She and Okabe join in.

“To cold beer!” “To cold beer!” “To cold beer.”

Nothing but darkness outside the windows, now. The last vestiges of daylight have faded. Bobbing his head to music blasting out of an MP3 player resting on the counter, Kohaku pauses to riff on an air guitar through his favorite chord.

Grabbing the pan of egg fried rice, he doles out a serving in each of the dishes. The cubes of Idea-heart are sizzling on the grill, giving off a pungent herb-like aroma. The sauce they were dipped in has soaked in satisfyingly like tofu, but their dark color makes it harder to see. Trails of fat drizzle down through the metal grating, into the waiting mouth of a small red flame wisp providing the cooking heat. The tip of its cone is a pale blue, as are a set of busy eyebrows above the fire’s eyes. “Your heat control and distribution is improving,” Kohaku states.

“Keep the feed coming and I’ll only get stronger, coach!” The Kitsunebi had been haunting apartment buildings before Kohaku found it, eating the pilot lights and causing numerous mysterious gas leaks and fires.

Using a set of tongs, Kohaku portions out the cubes into each of the broad, shallow serving bowls, then pours lines of extra sauce back and forth across them. Seven servings of Teriyaki Idea-Heart over rice. Setting five on a pair of serving trays ‘borrowed’ from the Higan cafeteria, Kohaku carries them deftly down the stairs.

Stepping into the first-floor space, Kohaku sees Marisa drinking with the boys. Even Tako has loosened up and grabbed a can. Sliding the two-serving tray onto a table near Marisa and Aida, he carries the other to the poker table and sets it next to the game. “Meshiagare.”

Cracking into a grin, Aida sits up on the couch. He’s finally put on some underwear, with Tsuchinoko resting on his back, eyes peering over his shoulders. “Itadakimasu!” he proclaims, grabbing a pair of chopsticks.

“Itadakimasu. I could get used to this,” Marisa remarks, picking up her bowl. She leans closer and takes in a whiff of the dish. “What’s this, black tofu?” Kohaku’s face twitches into a wily smirk, and she hesitates.

“Give it a try first, tell me what it’s like.”

Hesitantly, she plucks out a sample of the dish. Setting it her mouth, she tests the flavor. “Mmf,” she furrows her eyes and looks between Kohaku and the plate. When she finally swallows the bite, she says, “That has a mean kick. It definitely washed out the taste of the beer.”

Throwing back his head, Kohaku barks a harsh laugh. “It’s insulted to see my cooking paired with that disgrace of a liquor. I should bring over some of the good stuff next time.” A resounding hell yeah of approval from Okabe and Aida.

As he’s walking back to the stairs, Tako’s sharp-pitched voice cuts in. “When is the new guy coming around?” The boy is still looking at his cards like his eyes could burn holes through them.

“When I learn whether that sister of his is real or not,” voice cold, Kohaku cracks his knuckles. “Then, we see if he can Awaken.”

“So we’re going to throw him to the wolves, like with me? See if he sinks or swims?” there’s nervousness in Marisa’s voice. She’s still softer than the rest. Her life’s hardship is recent and raw. “What about… if he doesn’t make it?”

Turning and resting a hand on his hip, Kohaku tells her, “I’ll make sure his sister is taken care of. You have my word on that.” It doesn’t seem to have soothed all her worries, but she nods her head. Leaving them to their meal, Kohaku eagerly returns to Tai’s side.

“Trying to force Awakenings?” crouched beneath the window, Kaoru wears a deep-set frown behind her helmet. It’s exactly what she feared when she heard the rumors, a gang of delinquents who barely understand what they’re messing with, misusing the Idea World for power. Only a matter of time before the scope of these abuses blooms too large, or alerts someone who really shouldn’t know.

Taking out a small digital camera, she makes sure the flash is off, then cautiously lifts it into the window and snaps a few shots of the room and its occupants. “I’ll need to alert the Council about this.”

Hanging from a low balcony, Kenji kicks his feet, desperately trying to find purchase. The weight of his camera hangs against his back, where it can’t be dashed against the wall. One kicking leg finally finds the crook of a nearby tree, a thin thing, but enough. With an extensive struggle, he drags himself up and over, forcing himself to slide awkwardly down onto his stomach so he doesn’t flip around on top of Tokiwa-chan.

Kenji lay there panting for several minutes, while beeping chirps from the device inquire if he’s alright. “Wa…ter…” reaching into his mail-style bag, he drags out a plastic bottle and chugs down several gulps. Pushing back onto his knees, he brings the camera around on his neck and peeks over the ledge of the balcony.

From here, there’s a perfect angle straight into the upper window. The second-floor view reveals the serpentine Idolon within, coiled across the floor. A glowing spirit wisp floats through the grates of a camping grill, chewing charred residue off the metal. No sign of the person who’d been there before, but-

Perking up, Kenji zooms in his camera on the yard. A figure clad in dark red is crouched beside one of the windows. “The plot thickens… but will they find her, or will she make a ‘clean’ getaway?” The subject of the shot takes out a camera of their own, and Kenji cringes at the careless way they line up shots at random. “No artistry, no care. If you don’t bother to make it tasteful, it’s just- ugh!”

Lowering his camera, Kenji washes down the foul taste with another gulp of water. Movement in the window catches his attention. The unidentified Awakened is reentering the room, sitting down across a ragged blue kotatsu. Kenji swiftly brings the camera back up to capture the moment. There’s something there, in the way they look at each other across the table. The dark-haired man reaches across to deliver a morsel of food directly into the Idolon’s mouth. It’s a tender motion, drawn out and savored by the both of them. A black, slug-like tongue steals the food away from the chopsticks in a way that’s- “That’s not very-family friendly. (,,>﹏<,,)”

“How intriguing. A story of forbidden romance, sequestered away in the dark,” Kenji narrates to himself, eyes intensely focused on the scene. A mixture of sympathy and opportunity scroll past beneath his technical interest in the angle of the shot. Here is someone not so different from himself. And like him, they must want to keep their Idolon forever… “Another tragedy of the clock, a Byronic hero waiting to happen. We will need to conference with the producer about a new casting call, but- no, maybe better to beg forgiveness than ask permission?”

While the director debates with himself whether to loop Itsuro in before approaching a new recruit, the two subjects share their meal in domestic bliss, unaware of the glaring eyes stealing glances.

A long, black tongue slithers out of Tai’s mouth and dips into the dish, food sticking to it or becoming ensnared in its coils. Kohaku raises another bite to his own mouth, savoring the taste. Teriyaki sauce provides a tasty sweetness, undercut by a strange flavor from the Idea-meat. Marisa was right when she called it a kick. It’s a synesthetic experience, a sourness you can feel in the skin. Prickling numbness, like the aftereffects of a beating. Kohaku’s adrenal gland fires off, jolting his body with a flood of energy. “Ah…” he licks his lips, fingers clutching the chopsticks like a weapon. “The thrill of the hunt.”

Leaning over his dish, Kohaku digs in like a man possessed. The chase, the impact, the moment of victory, relived over and over again. Is this what Nightmare Eaters feel, when they drink our dreams? In this moment, Kohaku understands them. He understands the way only an addict could understand, how the brain aches for another hit, how the soul yearns for it. Something primal inside of him wants to devour, devour more.

When the last cube is gone down his gullet, Kohaku stuffs another morsel of egg and rice in his face and feels the absence. A disappointment that lingers on his tongue. He sucks in a breath, hand shaking. When he opens his eyes, Tai has emptied the other bowl as well. A pang of jealousy hits, a bitter aftertaste. “Do you feel it?”

”Victory. Power. I feel it, yes,” the worm breathes out the words. ”And strength. I am stronger, now.”

“And the aftertaste?” But the question is answered with silence, and a slow tilting of the head. There’s a comfort in knowing that the entire gang downstairs will not be feeling the same violent impulse thundering in Kohaku’s temples, the sensation of a hunt left incomplete. “Maybe… I gotta be more discerning with what Ideas I eat.”

Tai leans in closer. The worm’s breath washes over Kohaku’s face, the smell of rain and soil. Then, it lurches forward and a ring of sharp teeth sink into Kohaku’s shoulder. The pain, sharp and sudden, flashes through his body. A hard reset. Reflexively grabbing Tai’s head, Kohaku squeezes hard and tries to pull away, but a thick tail grabs him by the back and holds him steady. All he can do is sit and feel the throbbing of his blood against and around the ring of teeth, until the Idolon lets go of its own accord. Trails of blood run down Kohaku’s chest and back, leaving a sticky wetness. “What- wh-” he gasps, in shock.

There is a large, ringed bite mark around the side of Tai’s head. ”Now I gave us rabo baito too.” A long pause follows in which Kohaku only breathes, a resonant calm resettling and beginning to mend shut the new gashes. At last, Kohaku releases a small laugh. ”Do you feel better?”

“I do,” after giving the adrenal rush somewhere to go, Kohaku feels his body settling back into a state of calm. Looking down at the remains in his bowl, he pushes them away, staring into the wood grain of the table. “You were right, I have felt less in control,” he admits. “It started with these dreams. I see the shape of a lady, naked, her body stark white. But it’s like a mannequin, smooth with no features.” The lashing fin at the end of Tai’s tail goes still. “You know her?”

”No,” the Idolon’s red, central eye flickers. Dark, then bright again. ”The mind does not know her. But the body tenses.”

“You too,” Kohaku exhales. “But you don’t- you’re not going mad. I feel like I’m going mad.”

”The hunt has always been there,” speaking softly, the serpent allows its tail to begin its gentle sway once more. ”Since the humans used their words to name me. I have found my calm. But now, the hunt finds you.”

“Is this what Idolons feel? What Nightmare Eaters feel?”

”I cannot say what others feel. Only what I feel.”

”Feelings?” a quiet voice murmurs into the room. Kohaku looks to the window, where a thin splotch of tar runs under the gap where a cold draft flows in at certain times of the night. ”What feelings are we feeling? Does Ko-ko want to play and dream and forget?” The voice belongs to a tiny Shade that has taken to lingering around the gang’s hangouts. Hover lazily in the air, the ball of dark ooze produces tiny blobs that orbit around it, and then settle back into the central mass, like a lava lamp.

“I’m too tired to play, Inku,” Kohaku dismisses, sadly. He fears what Shade-induced hallucinations would lead his mind to right now. “And I would rather not dream.”

”Are you having bad dreams?” the small creature drifts closer. ”Do you want me to eat them?”

“No,” a quiet solemnity in Kohaku’s voice insists, pausing the tiny decomposer in its trail through the air. “I would not want you to turn into a bad dream. Then we wouldn’t be able to play together anymore.”

”Why not?”

“Because you wouldn’t be you. You would only want to eat. And you wouldn’t want to play anymore.” The stark refusal and the heavy words glance off of the small-minded creature, which remains silent and uncomfortable, wobbling at an unsteady wavelength. “You should go ask Aida and Tsuchinoko to play.”

”Okay! You need to lighten up, Ko-ko!” forming a spiral in the air, Inku dashes past and spills under the door.

Kohaku gets up from the kotatsu and takes the leftovers, covering them in wrap to store in the refrigerator. Kitsunebi has already finished cleaning and vanished back into the pages of the urban guidebook, where his image dances in his sleep.

Tossing his shirt on the ground, Kohaku curls back up underneath the table. Tai leans down and squeezes under, sliding so that their bodies are lying side by side. ”I will send you good dreams.”

“You can do that?”

”I can try.”

Still squatting out of view, Kaoru sifts through the images. The interior of the home is unkempt, with furniture that appears to have been dragged in from other abandoned homes nearby. At the center of it all, a coffee table holds a Ouija board with a Tamagotchi virtual pet sitting in the middle of the planchet. In every digital photo, there’s an unexplained distortion around the two pieces of paraphernalia. “So that’s the source of the Bleed. Is it really so simple? The Ouija board I understand, but there must be something anomalous about that virtual pet.” She’d been seeing more of them pop up lately, in the hands of other students. If someone out there is manufacturing virtual pets that connect to the Idea World, that could be another problem.

The young detective’s musing is interrupted when the outside door opens. “Ah, feel that night air!” a cheerful voice calls out. Kaoru quickly lowers herself into the grass. “You’re right, Inku-kun. It’s a perfect night for hide-and-seek.”

”I will hide first and you will find me!”

“Haha, sure! Don’t underestimate Tsuchinoko’s nose!” the first voice begins counting loudly down from ten.

Kaoru mentally tracks her escape routes. The streets are long and open, her bike would give her an unbeatable speed advantage, but the zone is too small to make use of it. Not to mention it would guarantee she was spotted. Slipping past the house behind her and onto the next street seems like the best option. She can find an unoccupied house to hide in while they-

Something small and gelatinous bumps into Kaoru’s side. A tiny ball of floating tar, which leaves a faint residue on her leathers that’s already disappearing. ”Hello! Are you playing hide and seek too?”

“No, go away,” waving her hand is if to shoo away a fly. Kaoru tries to make the Shade leave her alone. Her voice is a low hiss, “Go play your game.”

“… aaand one, here I come!” the other voice calls out, making Kaoru tense up.

”You’re going to get me caught… you go away!” the tiny sphere puffs itself up like a pouting child, and Kaoru frowns under her helmet.

“I’d love to,” in a crouch, she starts edging towards the back of the house. The Nightmare Shade flies past her around the corner, then comes swirling back around squealing.

“Aha, got you,” a tall, lanky teen in his underwear and a snake-patterned house robe skates over the grass as he skids around the corner. There’s a sudden freeze as he and Kaoru stare at one another. “Eeh? What the hell!”

“Majjikurifu!” Kaoru throws out a hand. A swirl of leaves and grass cuttings erupts into the air, getting in the delinquent’s eyes. Kaoru sprints away as he grunts and rubs at the particulate. The Nightmare Shade tries to get in her way, laughing at her ‘joke,’ and she knocks it aside with a hand. “Sorry-” she mutters, gunning it onto the street. Now that she’s been spotted, she needs to get out of here before they all come out on a manhunt!

“And Chekhov’s Gun exits stage left, loaded for another day,” remaining crouched on the balcony, Kenji watches as the scarlet hero dashes down the street. A barefoot pursuer stumbles out of the grass, rubbing his eyes, with an inkblot floating around his head. “I think we have what we need, Tokiwa-chan.”

”Trying to recruit him-is a bit risky in person. What-if he refuse-? He will know-your face.”

“Why would he refuse?” Kenji asks, tilting his head at the camera’s blinking recording light. “You saw it all. Mad love, the strongest motivator of all. Everything is already in place for us, we only need to give a little direction and the entire gang will fall in line behind their leader! Itsuro will understand once we succeed.”

After waiting for the situation outside to quiet down, the auteur drops gracelessly from the balcony to slink home.

Three miles beneath the city, moisture drips from the stalactites above an underground lake. Waterways flow in and out of the chamber, carrying pitch dark water through pitch dark caves, hollow veins of the Earth. Deep, forgotten, yet not untouched by human hands. Metal proboscis stretch down from above, pipes dipping greedily into the aquifer. Old, rusted remnants of forgotten equipment sit on a stony shore, from when the city dug to tap into the dark water.

Carried on the currents, little strands of detritus clump into a white web. The demon trawls up its net, and delicate white hands pluck the forgotten strings. With nails like needles, it knits what was broken together again. An Idea, scattered, but not slain. Its greasy hair splashes against the stone, its shadowy form nearly invisible in the dark. Two yellow eyes crack open and look up at their benefactor.

“Poor lost thing,” a silk-white hand caresses the imaginary delinquent’s face. The face that could be anyone, had they the desire to reject polite society. ”You’ve lost your other half, haven’t you?” The demon can feel the roiling in the Idea’s chest, the gap where something is missing.

”Bastards,” Gang Violence rasps. ”Every last one of them for the beatdown…”

”Yes, sweet child. Every last one of them will pay,” the demon smiles, a pale leech’s lip, the jaw ringed with sharp teeth. Its radiant face is like a gentle, kind moon. ”And you will have what you lost returned to you.” The yellow eyes look up at their savior, a basic consciousness grasping only the barest comprehension. ”That an Idea is slain… does not mean it cannot be born again,” she croons, soothing and low. ”So you will rise.”

”You will rise, with my power flowing through your new heart.”

”And the streets of this city… will overflow with violence.”

Fingers dig into the Idea’s chest. Its screams mix with the demon’s lullaby, traveling up through the water pipes. Above, in the city of Kageoka, people drink. They drink in the Idea-blood, and like a parasite it takes root in their hearts. Adrenal glands misfire, flooding them with potential kinetic energy. Violence, coiled and waiting to strike.

The Tribe. The Gang. The Clan. The delinquents and the Yakuza will feel it first, the beating impulse of Gang Violence. Then the old families, with their feuds and grudges. Names are what give it power. And when their conflicts erupt and throw the city into chaos, the Mean Streets will be reborn. The broken will be made whole again.

Just as the demon promised. For the Kiro no Kawa always keeps its promises.

Episode 3: Broken Masquerade (Kohaku, Momo, Kenji, Kentaro, Che Ngiem, Shu, ID Gang, Fumiko)

Pleasant chimes ring through the air, cutting off the new history teacher’s long diatribe about the Chinese people, their atrocities, and how they should be cleansed from the earth. History holds no interest to the young man seated next to the door of the senior classroom, who spent the last half hour staring into the ceiling lights or scribbling recipe ideas into his notebook.

No sooner has the chime finished, than Kohaku is out the door, sliding his notebook into his bag. He marches to the gymnasium, where the sports clubs meet after school, each step driven with purpose.

Today is the Tennis Club’s turn to use the gymnasium. When Kohaku storms in like a bat out of hell, two of the players rallying back and forth across the nets look over and miss the ball, receiving a tongue lashing from their doubles partner. None of them matter. Kohaku’s eyes, intense and focused, are locked on one person. Momofuku Chikata, notorious Sukeban and leader of the Fujiwara Senki. She’s seated in the bleachers with the other tennis players waiting their turn, and meets Kohaku’s approach with a wary look. Hers’ is not the wariness of prey, but of an apex in its ecosystem, sizing up what may be a challenger.

“What’re you doing here, baker boy?” she asks, casual in her demand. “Shouldn’t you be at the soup kitchen?”

“Won’t take long.” Curt in his response, Kohaku stops at the foot of the bleachers. “Yuki Hajime from the Gator Teeth, does he have a sister?”

The question comes as a non-sequitur, and Momofuku narrows her eyes. One of the few students in the school that knows about Kohaku’s delinquency. Most of the student body believe the same thing as the teachers: when he’s missing from class, he’s off doing charity work for one of his father’s foundations. Momofuku though, she makes it her business to know the gangs and allegiances that network through Higan. Eyes on Aida become eyes on Kohaku.

“Weird question,” the answer is heavy, weighed down by something she knows. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m in a hurry.”

“I don’t care.”

Frowning, Kohaku shifts from one foot to the other. He feels the eyes of the other benched tennis players on him, the rumor mill already turning in their heads. “… He came to a clothing drive,” Kohaku lies, “Grabbed some girls’ clothes, said it was for his sister. I want to know if he’s legit or a creeper.”

Leaning forward, Momofuku rests her head on her knuckles, and her elbows on her knee, like a monarch looming over his court. “Yuki Hajime was stabbed yesterday.” Shock punches Kohaku in the chest, his eyes widen and he looks up at her, expression demanding more. Momofuku reads his face carefully, then, satisfied, she nods. You had nothing to do with it, her eyes conclude, softening. “Another gang jumped the Gator Teeth at their hangout. One of them was found dead on the scene, and Yuki was taken to the hospital by a bystander.” Momofuku’s voice is steady, unshaken by the grim subject, but kept low for the sensitive ears of her clubmates.

“Shit,” Kohaku curses under his breath. “That’s awful… Does he have a sister?”

The insistent, blunt question brings back that wary look in the Sukeban’s eyes. “Does it matter now?”

“He said he looks after her,” crossing his arms, Kohaku taps his foot impatiently. He’s already late for the volunteer kitchen. It itches at the back of his mind like a rash. Fuck, he hates being late. “If he’s not coming home, someone needs to send someone.”

“Hospital probably did,” Momofuku shrugs. “Guess it can’t hurt to be sure. Yeah, he’s got a little sister.” So he wasn’t lying. The Gator Teeth were stealing and extorting from businesses in their territory to feed their families.

Solemnly, Kohaku nods. “Thanks. I’ll make sure one of my father’s foundations sends her help.” Turning on his heel, he walks with that same intensity out of the gymnasium, then breaks into a sprint towards the cafeteria.

Finally able to take a breath, Kohaku steps out of the kitchen’s back door into the fresh air. Shu and Maliaya had been more than happy to take over cleaning up the kitchen. They didn’t even need to hear an excuse. Sure, there’s a lingering guilt, a foul taste that clings to his tongue like rotten fish. Leaving his volunteer-mates to stay late after he was late getting there… it’s disgraceful. As a chef, he should be ashamed of himself.

But there are things that need to be done.

New or not, a member of the ID was just stabbed by a rival gang. Righteous fury shakes in Kohaku’s knife hand, aching to return the favor. He’s never turned the blade on another human before, but every passing day it feels easier, more tempting. You can’t come after one of us and not expect retribution.

Cutting across the school grounds to the back of Higan campus, Kohaku flips open his phone and dials the Toyota Crown Comfort taxi company. “I’m at Higan Academy,” he bowls right over the practiced, formal greeting from the desk clerk on the other end. “Send a cab to the rear entrance next to the athletic field. I need to visit Kageoka Center Hospital, it’s urgent.”

“Wakatta! We will be on the way, client-san!” the man on the other side responds with forced cheer. It sounds like the usual clerk. Kohaku hangs up and stuffs the phone in his jacket pocket.

It’s not track and field season, so the athletic field is empty. A wide, squat building, little more than a set of bleachers and shanty walls larping as a sports stadium. There are entrances at each of the four cardinal directions. Kohaku cuts through one to save time, walking through the dimly lit tunnel. Sunlight shines in from the other side, where the red track glares at him like the surface of Mars. On either side, feeble aluminum steps lead up into the stands. Through the struts that hold the structure together, old trash and bits of rotten stadium fare can be seen dotting the dirt. Candy wrappers and tea bottles, caught up in the leaves of hardy weeds, nestled away where only cracks of light can reach.

Kohaku can smell some of the old food, moldy and plagued by buzzing insects. The groundskeeper should be reprimanded for allowing these nooks to fester. Surely this is someone’s job.

At least the field is properly tended. Kohaku walks briskly through the middle, past the red and onto a carefully tended patch of green stubble. The place isn’t as empty as he expected it to be. In the stands ahead of him, seated above the tunnel that is his goal, is Kurosawa Kenji. Perking up as though he’d been expecting the visitor, Kenji raises a hand in the air and waves. The other remains perched on his ever-present camera, like the talons of a guardian gargoyle. “Fukuzawa-senpai! Hello! I have a wonderful opportunity I’d like to share with you!”

Kohaku has no time for one of the film buff’s long spiels about starring in his latest project. Eyes set straight ahead, Kohaku tries his best to ignore Kenji’s presence entirely.

“Ah, your walk- so fierce. Like Christian Bale’s performance as Patrick Bateman, a human bullet shot through the heart of the scene. Not moving, but forcing the whole set to move around you. The way you cross the lines of the track, ignoring the conventional purp- ah, hey! Fukuzawa-senpai, wait!” the predicted rambling begins, but when Kohaku walks straight under without stopping, Kenji gets up. Kohaku can hear Kurosawa making his way towards the stairs to cut off the escape route, and Kohaku speeds up.

A shadow steps in from the other stairway. Blond hair, bright in the gloom, and a set of glowering eyes. Standing with a confident slump, Tachibana Kentaro leans across the hallway and rests his hand against the wall, barring Kohaku’s passage. As Kohaku’s steps slow to a halt, Kenji bustles down beside the delinquent and puffs, “Please, just hear me out!”

“I don’t have time,” Kohaku answers in cold exasperation. “Someone is in the hospital.”

“Oh,” eyes going wide, Kenji stares blankly into space for a long moment. “I’m sorry to hear that. I understand- I can be brief, I promise. This is about your Idolon!” Just as Kohaku is about to turn on his heel and march back onto the field to take a different route, he freezes. Kenji forces a smile onto his face, still shaken by the earlier admonishment. “Yes. I know.”

Silence clings to the tunnel, heavy in the dark. Kohaku’s expression has changed, no longer looking through the obstacle, but straight at it. His eyes are locked on Kenji’s, and the younger boy fidgets with his camera, stepping from foot to foot.

“I have an Idolon too,” wearing a goofy smile, Kenji holds out a hand. “She’s the most special thing in the world to me, and I know you feel the same- ah, about yours’, I mean. Not about mine.” With an awkward, but easy laugh, the boy cradles his camera, tenderly like the face of a lover. Kohaku feels a hammering in his chest, his heart struggling to pump the chilled sludge through his veins.

There’s no sense in a protracted song and dance. “That’s right,” Kohaku admits, still locked onto his opposite. Kenji’s smile gets wider. Kohaku can see, he’s giddy too. Like in this moment he’s finally found someone whose thoughts are running on the same wavelength.

It’s how Kohaku wished he’d felt the first time Aida found out about them. About Kohaku and Tai. Aida didn’t understand, not like this, but he tried. He tried to be supportive. Sometimes you just need someone to talk to who gets it. “It takes a special kind of person to find the beauty in the places others fear to tread,” the cameraman speaks passionately, while Kentaro makes gagging motions at his mouth, over Kenji’s shoulder. “But the world isn’t on our side.” There’s a desperate sadness in his voice. “This world has never been on the side of love.”

“You had a proposal. I’d appreciate if you’d get to the point Kurosawa,” speaking curtly still, but in a softer tone, Kohaku stuffs his hands in his pockets. A sense of ease has come to rest on his shoulders, in spite of the other lingering question- why that thug over there is playing bodyguard to such a dweeb.

“I said I’d be brief,” recalling his earlier promise, Kenji looks down at the bare dirt. “You will lose your Idolon when you turn twenty-two, if not earlier.”

A knife stabs Kohaku straight through the gut. “What?” The steel in those words is cold, as ice cold as truth.

“I have studied. I have sources,” Kenji elucidates his claim. “When your brain undergoes the shift into adulthood, when it loses that- that precious spark that lets it touch the Idea World in this way, your Idolon will be forever out of your grasp.” The prophecy of doom does not hang in the air for long before another smile graces the boy’s face, and he holds out his hand again. “I’ve also learned there’s another way. We can still escape the star-crossed fate of our loves.”

Kohako takes a step forward, and something in his countenance must be threatening, because Kentaro lets go of the wall and stands beside Kenji. Shoulders squared, feet poised to launch forward, ready for a fight. “How?” Kohaku demands.

“Nurarihyon,” the word slides off of Kenji’s tongue. Like something not meant for this world, it lingers between the molecules in the air as steam. Nothing in this world wants to touch it. Instinctively, Kohaku recognizes it as a name. “He is coming. The commander of all Yokai, who will shatter the barrier between the worlds and return magic to this one,” holding both hands to either side, Kenji lets his camera rest over his heart. “We won’t have to say goodbye. And if you join him, you won’t ever have to say goodbye. We can leave our humanity behind and finally belong with the people we were meant to be with. All you have to do is take my hand, and let me lead you.”

Expectantly, Kenji stands there, waiting for an answer. Kohaku’s mind can barely process the information, backed up like a malfunctioning pancreas. It struggles to turn the gears, to formulate a response. Kohaku’s limbs feel cold. His hand grasps in his pocket for a handle that’s not there.

Razor-thin wires garrote the young man’s heart, threatening to slice open the vital muscle. They tug him forward, one step, then another. Kenji’s face lights up with expectant joy. He opens his mouth to say something, but all Kohaku can hear is the blood pulsing through his ears. And…

You are mine. Return to me, sweet child, and we all shall be made whole.

The voice comes from inside of Kohaku’s veins, singing like a lullaby. His vessels are its lungs. Its vocal cords are every muscle in his body. The hands clenching, the legs slowly inching forward, the heart being squeezed like a stress ball.

An invisible pressure in the air lays itself across Kohaku’s chest, halting his mindless advance. A familiar shape nestles itself beneath his chin, rubbing into his neck. The world does not know of the Idolon’s presence, but the nerves under Kohaku’s skin remember. They recognize its touch.

No. You are mine. Do not let them take my you away.

Clammy sweat glues the hair to Kohaku’s forehead. His entire body is flush with it, suddenly, oozing from every pore, a layer of cold wet. Like a splash of water to the face, it shocks him out of his fugue. “My humanity?” he asks, mind still in a daze.

Some of the excitement dwindles from Kenji’s face, and his outstretched arms grasp his camera like a railing he’d been forgetting to hold. “Yes. The price of Nurarihyon’s salvation is your human soul,” he admits, as though he were speaking of any worthless slip of paper to be traded as a token. “I feel the same as before, so it can’t have been doing much of value, right?” At the macabre jest, Kenji closes his eyes and laughs. “It barely even hurts removing it.”

“Really?” Wearing a twisted grin, Kentaro leans forward to study Kenji’s face. “Stung like a fuckin’ bitch for me. I think you might just be fucked in the head,” reaching up, he nudges Kenji’s temple with a finger.

“I’m not interested.”

Kenji’s expression falls from his face. “Really?” What’s left is an eerie, blank mask. “I really thought we were having a moment. What changed?” Beside him, Kentaro takes one step forward, body bent in preparation. He anticipates running down fleeing prey. Kohaku draws his hands from his pockets, so they’ll be ready.

“My Idolon has advised me against it,” Kohaku answers with blunt honesty. “I trust in Tai’s judgement.”

“Oh,” looking down at his camera, Kenji shrugs his shoulders. “Well. If you ever change your mind, you know where to find us…”

“But,” wagging a finger, Kentaro starts walking down the tunnel. “You know a too much now, senpai. Heh. We can’t have you turning into a rat.”

“Kentaro-”

“Nah,” the thug cuts off his director’s call. He’s taken control of the off-rails script, ad libbing his own lines. “We tried things your way, Ken-kun. Now it’s time for Ken-sama to do things his way!” Like a race horse at the starting pistol, he launches himself forward.

Kohaku plants his feet and braces a shoulder ahead to meet Kentaro’s shoulder check, but what hits him isn’t a human being. It’s like a freight train slammed straight into his right side, sending him sprawling to the ground. Everything in his right arm is a sharp pain, and then a numbness. Dislocated. Trying to scramble to his knees, Kohaku is thrown forward by a kick to the tailbone, launching him onto the synthetic, red Martian dirt. The gripping material scrapes his cheek and chin, leaving tears and a taste of blood.

Twisting on the ground, Kohaku can see Kentaro lurching forward on long, lazy strides, taking the moment to enjoy seeing his prey on the ground. Kohaku shoots a hand into his coat pocket and grabs the round device within.

Fingers tap across the keyboard as Che Ngiem, Higan’s teacher of the sciences, transcribes advice and corrections into the latest in a long list of student essays. Technology is a miracle, allowing his words per minute to skyrocket beyond what anyone could manage with ink and pen in hands of men.

Beep! Beep!

A notification flashes on the taskbar. Che glances at it. He stops, and opens the map of Kageoka. His Distortion Detection Program is responding as one of his sensors throughout the city picks up something anomalous. The schoolteacher looks at the computer screen, then out the window, then back at the screen in a double take. “Here?!”

Standing up so fast he knocks over his chair, Che sprints out of the room. He rushes to the janitor’s closet, then the sub-closet within. Hung up in the corner is a large, bulky yellow hazard suit, and several devices are mounted on the walls. Fast fingers fumble with buckles as he rushes to put on his safety gear.

Kohaku presses the button. Around their small portion of the athletic field, a pulse of energy washes over reality. The track kicks up dirt that floats in the air, tasting of grit in their mouths. The grass turns a brilliant red, and the sun beats down hotter than before. Martian dust stains the metal stands framing Kenji, who watches and records from the mouth of the tunnel.

The instant the Bleeding Zone takes effect, Tai is poised protectively around Kohaku like a coiled snake, transmuting the air into volatile gas. With one spark, an eruption of flame engulfs Kentaro. Within the flames, the younger delinquent is a black, charred silhouette. Then, the shadow takes a step forward.

Walking calmly out of the fire is a dark figure, eyes and veins gleaming like molten gold. A vision of an Asura, he leaps into the air. A flying knee strikes the underside of Tai’s face, the impact hurling the worm through the air, body sprawled behind it. Sympathetic momentum launches Kohaku from the ground into the air, where the Asura grabs him by the shoulders and sets him on his shaky feet.

With one remaining good arm, Kohaku delivers an uppercut to the Asura’s chin, his own flesh glowing from the inside as if irradiated by power. The impact pushes Kentaro’s head upwards, but leaves no mark on his clenched jaw.

“Good.”

The hands gripping Kohaku’s shoulders throw him straight up into the air, then the Asura leaps, outrunning his trajectory so fast the eyes can barely trace it. A spinning kick sends Kohaku slamming back into the ground, air knocked out of his lungs and chest burning like he just got shot. The kick dislocated his other shoulder and nearly tore it from his body. The socket screams with body-locking pain.

Turning his head, Kohaku looks to Tai for aid, but a rectangular section of the Zone has changed around his Idolon. Grainy and monochrome, like a black and white film reel, each movement of the worm is slow and choppy, a stop-motion picture running in slow-mo.

A large hand grips the front of Kohaku’s shirt and drags him to his feet, then swings him through the air. Tossed like a ragdoll, he spins heels over head until he slams back into the ground and rolls, red dust caking his jacket. “Ah…” finally able to suck in a gasp of air, Kohaku struggles not to choke on the Martian clouds. Both arms out of commission, he struggles to get his knees under him and force himself upright.

By the time Kohaku returns upright, Kentaro’s Idolon form is standing over him, expression flat. Rolling his shoulders, Kentaro bends down and grabs the top of Kohaku’s head. “Listen up. You can either join willingly, or we’ll rip out your soul ourselves.” It’s deep, deeper than it was, but still him.

“Kentaro-san, that won’t work!” the higher voice of Kenji calls from the edge of the field. “They have to choose to join willingly, it can’t be forced!” Beside the film jockey is what can only be an Idolon. Through blurry eyes, Kohaku can make out a head made out of high-tech screens and lenses, atop a monochromatic track suit.

“Well nobody fuckin’ told me!“ the Asura snaps over his shoulder. Looking down at Kohaku, he saws his jaw back and forth. “Fine. New offer: join and I won’t flatten your face.”

“That doesn’t sound very willing-”

“It’s his choice not to get flattened, ain’t it?!”

“No! I don’t know? You’ll ruin the drama of the moment doing it that way!”

While the two argue back and forth, Kohaku catches his breath and lets his vision swim back into something coherent. Stay quiet, wait for your moment… Tai inches closer to the edge of the slowing field. The camera Idolon is distracted, trying to advise Kenji. Kohaku can’t make out the voice well from here- disjointed, artificial.

Repeatedly, the heavy battery pack slams against Che’s back. The warm day beats down, heat seeping into the sweltering environment of his hazmat suit and stubbornly staying there. Desperately sucking in air, he slows down to catch his breath.

Through a set of bulky goggles covering his eyes, Che stares down the athletic field tunnel. It renders the world in shades of orange and black, allowing him to witness elements of anomalous zones not visible to the naked eye, but makes normal details harder to parse. As a secondary benefit, they allow him to see the structure of the terrain, even in the dark.

Reaching back, the researcher draws a large two-handed device from the battery pack, built like a flamethrower nozzle. Wires lead back to the power source like a hose. Fiddling with the knobs and small screen on the side, Che adjusts the wavelength of the output to match as closely as he can the reverse of the pattern his sensors are picking up from the distortion. When activated, the Ngiemic Wave Projector (patent pending) uses a piezoelectric module to output a counter-wave on the same dimensional frequency. If the principle of destructive interference works as it should, the two opposing wavelengths will cancel out, negating the distortion and any anomalies it’s producing.

Stepping onto the field, Che observes a semispherical distortion centered on two humanoid figures. A large, serpentine shape is in a rectangular prism subfield, and two other humanoids are nearby. One of them, the largest of the humanoids, is gripping another by the head. It’s impossible to know who the victim is, but this close to the Academy, after school…

“Enough arguing!” yelling in a booming voice, the large figure winds up its fist.

“Get away from my student!” stepping closer, Che hefts the Wave Projector at his hip and aims it towards the scuffle. Pulling the release lever, he emits a waveform beam that his goggles register as a deep black void. A deafening sound fills the entire arena, like the collective scream of a hundred perfectly organized cicadas. The stream is unstable and scattered, swaying unpredictably. Where it contacts the distortion’s brilliant orange textures, they scramble and begin to break up, struggling to reform behind the path of the beam.

The stream clips one of the large figure’s arm, and it doubles over with a visceral shout. That’s when the smaller one lunges forward.

“Get away from my student!” Ngiem-sensei’s muffled voice shouts across the field, from a large orange space-suit near the south entrance. He’s carrying some kind of device, and when he throws a switch it emits a terrible noise. It’s high-pitched and irritating, but Kohaku feels something worse bleed over through his connection to his Idolon. Tai writhes in slow motion, and a horrible nausea grips Kohaku’s guts.

A spiral beam of pulsing white light radiates from the barrel of the device, the Bleeding Zone forming ripples around it like a stream of piss into a pond. It whips in every direction, barely under control. Where it strikes the grass, the Martian terrain morphs back to its normal state, ripples of real and irreal alternating in all directions.

Kenji tries to yell something, but his voice is inaudible beneath the screech. The field his Idolon generated around Tai is struck by the ripples and begins to break up, allowing the worm to break free and throw itself towards Kohaku’s location.

The laser clips the arm holding onto Kohaku’s head, and the Idolon form is ripped away like scattered oil, growing through his skin and then falling away repeatedly. Kentaro’s steely expression breaks into one of agony and he doubles over, grabbing the shifting flesh of his arm. Kohaku is freed.

Jumping to his feet, Kohaku shoulder checks Kentaro back while angling his head down. The impact barely staggers the Asura’s stance, but in the inner side of Kohaku’s jacket is his chef’s knife- he grabs the handle between his teeth and pulls it free. Then, he twists his body to stab the blade into the exposed arm.

“Bastard!” Kentaro shouts, then headbutts Kohaku to the ground. “I won’t forget this!” The thug runs towards the tunnel entrance, meeting Kenji and the camera girl there. Kentaro yanks the weapon free from his forearm and tosses it behind him on the ground. Both of them disappear into the dark.

Ngiem-sensei swings the beam of energy towards Tai, who slithers out of the way, rolling onto the ground as a series of violent abdominal cramps strike from the repeated alternations between Idea-space and real-space. “Stop!” Staggering to his feet, Kohaku tries to yell. It’s no use. The machine is too loud.

With his damned hands both hanging limply by his side, he can’t reach the button on his Tamagotchi to switch it off. Instead, he throws himself at the stands, flopping against the uneven surfaces until one of their edges punches the right spot in his pocket. In an instant, the entire Bleeding Zone vanishes, and Tai alongside it. Whatever that beam of energy was, it likewise vanishes.

The deafening racket remains until Ngiem-sensei finally switches off his machine. A lingering ringing tortures Kohaku’s ears as he flops down onto the bleacher bench, hurting down every inch of his body. He can’t manage to do anything but lie down and breath, the stretching of his chest making him wince.

Heavy footsteps plod towards Kohaku’s bench. “Hey! … Who is that? Fukuzawa-san?” Managing to turn his head, Kohaku sees Ngiem-sensei, hazmat hood hanging behind his sweat-drenched head, pulling a large set of night-vision goggles from his face. “Are you alright?”

“No.”

Looking down at a screen on the device, Ngiem-sensei frowns. “Almost dead already? That was seven seconds less than…” Shaking his head, he reaches down to try and help Kohaku up. When Kohaku shouts at contact with his dislocated shoulders, the science teacher jumps back and holds up his hands. “Okay. Who to call? Shu, call Shu!”

Unable to do anything but lie still for the five minutes it takes Shu Jinko to sprint across the school grounds from the cafeteria kitchen, Kohaku stares up at the clouds. Ngiem-sensei drags himself out of the hazmat suit and folds it up, his collared shirt looking like he just ran a marathon in it.

“Fukuzawa-san, if I’m not mistaken,” the teacher glances at Kohaku, “Something you did… it seemed to coincide with the collapse of the distortion field. Can I ask, how did you-”

“I’m here!” perfect timing as ever, the Student Council Prez comes running onto the track field. “Aw man, that looks bad. We need to get you to the hospital,” skidding to a stop next to them, Shu reaches to grab his phone.

“Oh! I should have called an ambulance,” their absent-minded sensei reaches for his own phone at the same time, but Kohaku shakes his head and cuts them off.

“I already called a cab to take me there. It should be at the north gate.”

“When did you do that?” Ngiem-sensei looks at him, dumb-founded.

“I was going to visit someone there before I was jumped,” swinging his legs over the side of the bench, Kohaku sits up. Shu leans down and grabs him around the waist, helping him get steady.

“I gotcha.”

“Jumped? …We should talk more about this later, I will meet you both at the hospital with my car,” lugging all his equipment under each arm, Ngiem-sensei struggles to keep both sides steady, balancing with his knee and nearly toppling over. “I will meet you there!” he repeats, both halves of their huddle hobbling in opposite directions.

Kohaku stops himself, and Shu with him. Beneath them, a bloody knife sits on the rubbery red pavement. Looking down at it, his implement, coated in human blood for the first time- even from a soulless subhuman like Kentaro, it sets something off. Kohaku’s insides surge with primal thrill, an animal growl falling out of him. There’s a mental block, one carefully curated law in his mind, a line he told himself he wouldn’t cross. Well, now it’s crossed. And he’s never felt so free.

If they bleed, you can kill them. You can just kill the bad people. It won’t even be wrong.

“You alright there? They didn’t get you with that thing did they?” Shu tries to pull aside Kohaku’s jacket, but he shakes off the hands.

“Can you grab the knife? It’s mine. There’s a sheath inside my jacket.”

“What?” kneeling down to pick up the object, Shu flicks his hair aside. It settles in a perfect way around his face, without a hint of effort. Eyes, worried and judging, leer at Kohaku from beneath those wavy bangs. “You bring a knife to school? I feel like this is something I need to report.”

Fixing the Prez with a flat look, Kohaku asserts, “It’s for Idea World monsters.”

“I guess that confirms you’re Awakened,” Shu looks at the blade, dripping red. “This doesn’t look like monster blood.”

“It doesn’t belong to a human.”

A silent moment passes. The Prez looks into Kohaku’s eyes, as if searching for a lie. They narrow, as if puzzled. Finally, Shu covers the knife in a cloth and slides it into his own backpack. “The hospital staff will find this in your jacket, and they won’t be lenient. We’ll talk about returning it later, with the full School Council, when we discuss everything that happened. Sound fine?”

“Tch. Fine.”

A distant car horn honks, once. “That must be the taxi,” Shu steps in to help Kohaku walk again.

Kohaku lay in the hospital bed, scratchy paper-like sheets beneath him. One of the nurses relocated his shoulders, with Shu’s help to keep them steady, and both arms ached until they administered some painkillers. Supposedly, a doctor will be by soon to check for internal bleeding, but the nurse felt his stomach and said it didn’t feel hot. That’s a sign, apparently.

“You can go home, Jinko, I’m fine,” Kohaku insists for the fourth time.

“I’ll stay until your father gets here,” Shu insists, for the fifth time.

Then, they sit in silence for another few minutes. Footsteps come closer from outside the room, and another familiar face walks in. “Fukuzawa-san,” Ngiem-sensei sighs in relief and stops at the foot of the bed. “I have been unable to get a hold of your father, his phone returns only voicemail. Do you know your mother’s number?”

“No.”

The absolute negation freezes the teacher up. “What? You don’t know your mother’s phone number?”

“Don’t call her, she doesn’t need to worry about it,” Kohaku sits up in the bed, feeling a numbness in his limbs where the persistent sting had been. His elbows are shaky, and Shu reaches out to steady him. “I’m fine. They relocated my arms, so they can discharge me soon.”

“They still need to check for internal bleeding, the doctor said,” Shu tries to insist.

“It’ll be more efficient to get healing in the Idea World,” Kohaku fires back, stunning the Prez. His Honorable Perfection looks agape between Kohaku and Ngiem-sensei.

“The Idea World?” there’s an intensity in the teacher’s voice and eyes, the way his head tilts and allows the light to glint off of his glasses. It reminds Kohaku of the way he salivates while cooking a fine marbled Wagyu steak. “So you do know something about the distortion fields-”

“Sensei, he’s just dazed. He must have a concussion,” Shu stands up and tries to do damage control, waving his hands in the air. “The Idea World is from this new video game, it’s-”

“I can show you.” The Prez nearly jumps out of his skin, perfect hair frizzing on end like a startled cat. Kohaku grabs the leather jacket draped over a chair next to the table, and fishes out his Tamagotchi. “This allows me to summon Bleeding Zones at will, but it needs some time to recharge.” Shu jumps towards him and grabs for the device. Kohaku grabs the Prez’s face in turn, and falls out of the hospital bed in the struggle, setting off a call button. “Get off! This is mine!” Like a feral animal, Kohaku bites down on Shu’s- “Nnnnf-!” on his own hand.

Getting up from the scuffle, the Prez holds up the Tamagotchi triumphantly, only for Ngiem-sensei to reach out and take it from his hand, staring into the dark blue plastic. “Wha-”

A nurse steps inside and gasps, rushing to help Kohaku back into his bed. “What happened?”

“He was roughhousing,” Kohaku deadpans, pointing at Shu. “Make him leave, please.” Soon, the School Council President is lead stammering out of the room by the nurse. He still has the knife. Kohaku will need to deal with him later, but not now.

Slumping back into the hospital bed, Kohaku looks down the length at his science teacher, who already has a piece of notepaper out, sketching a diagram of the virtual pet game. “So,” he watches, Ngiem-sensei still off in his own world. “Che.”

The short, informal call-out makes the bespectacled teacher glance up. “Fukuzawa-san, I am still your teacher. I expect you to address me with respect.”

Kohaku smirks. “You saved my ass from a demonic freak. I think we’re on a first name basis now.”

“You’ve never spoken this way in my class,” setting down his pen, Che stands up straighter. “… So.”

“I think there’s a lot to fill you in on… that the School Council doesn’t want you to know about.”

Holding onto the rolling stand dripping a slow feed of painkillers into Kohaku’s system, the wounded delinquent slogs his way through the hospital hallways, peering into each room. Finally, he finds it. Yuki Hajime, lying in intensive care, hooked up to a beeping monitor. Kohaku pushes the sliding door open and steps inside.

Alive, and conscious. The Gator Tooth’s eyes widen when they see him, and the monitor’s beeping speeds up. “Relax, I’m not here to hurt you,” stepping softly next to the bed, Kohaku lays a hand on the bedside railing. “Your sister needs help while you’re in here, right? I’ll help hook her up with a decent group home.” The beeping gradually slows back down.

“Why?” the former gang leader’s voice is strained, raspy.

“You told me the truth,” Kohaku answers simply. “That makes you officially one of us. Now, tell me about who did this.”

It takes a while for Yuki to gather his breath. He seems lucid and aware, but very weak. “It was the… Denim Pygmies.” Kohaku needs to fight back a snort at the name. “Old beef… thought the…” Yuki sucks in a shaky breath. The beeping grows more erratic, and Kohaku furrows his brow. “Thought the Fu…fuji…” eyes growing more blurry, he struggles with the words.

“Hey, take it easy,” Kohaku tries to urge, but the boy keeps rambling.

“Fujiwara… Senki… med- mediated… we made peace…”

Beeeeeeeeeeee-

“Nurse!” Kohaku storms into the hallway. “Nurse!”

The nurse comes. But it’s too late for Yuki Hajime.

Of course, Shu Jinko is waiting in one of the lobby chairs. He gets up as soon as he sees Kohaku walking out with his street clothes back on. “Are you-”

“I told you I’m fine,” Kohaku snaps. Already, he can feel some of the aches working their way back up through the fading painkiller haze. “I’ll heal faster elsewhere.”

“That was incredibly stupid,” Shu scolds. “Kohaku-san, we keep the Idea World secret for a reason,” the Prez whispers in a hush voice, even as he helps Kohaku walk out the hospital doors. There’s a taxi waiting, and the Prez helps himself to the second back seat before any complaint can be made.

“Who is we? Take me to the east subway station,” Kohaku instructs the driver. He knows a good place in the tunnels to slip into the Forbidden wards without a permit.

“We is the Awakened,” Shu insists, as the cap moves back into traffic. “Any time we had before the genie came out of the bottle is gone, now.”

“Teach saved my ass. I’m not gonna lie to him.”

“How did he save you? All that stuff he had piled up?”

Kohaku lets out a heavy sigh. “Fine. I’ll fill you in on what happened…” He keeps Kenji and Kentaro’s names out of it, skimming over the details. Why, he’s not sure. Maybe the part of him still lingering on Kurosawa’s words.

Twenty-two.

Nine people stand on the lawn of an abandoned home deep in the Forbidden outskirts of Kageoka: Fukuzawa Kohaku, Taiyo, Uesugi Aida and Tsuchinoko, Kirigawa Marisa, Okabe, Kokancho, Takoyaki, and Shu Jinko. At the center of a circle, a bonfire built out of abandoned wooden furniture is blazing, the toxic smell of burning lacquers tainting the air wherever the wind blows. Never in the direction of Shu Jinko; so that’s where they crowd.

A folded jacket with a scratchy white print of a toothy gator on the back rests in Kohaku’s hands. “Yuki Hajime,” he begins, addressing the others in the half-circle, “Was not someone we knew well. But he told me the truth. Everything he stole, everything he extorted, as to give a decent life to his sister,“ staring into the flames, Kohaku prepares to say farewell to another member of the ID. Their lack of rules or guidelines tends to lead to careless mistakes in the Idea World. Aida, beside him, looks distant. Okabe and Tako look more jaded. Shu is unreadable. And Marisa, she’s nearly in tears.

“More importantly, he was to be a member of the Ideal Destroyers. I regret that he was lost to us before we could help him meet his true self. I know it would have been beautiful,” Kohaku lifts his chin and drops the jacket into the fire. He’d sooner burn the rest of the remains with it, but stealing a fresh corpse from the hospital is more heat than he feels like dealing with right now. “Yuki Hajime, I commit you to the flames. May you watch over your sister from the beyond.”

Those gathered stand solemnly while the remains of the garment smolder in the fire. The only sound is the crackling of the fire… and a distant motorcycle’s roar. Eye twitching at the interruption, Kohaku turns to look up the street. A lone headlamp rushes towards them. The motorcycle turns to a stop in front of the ID hangout, Momofuku Chikata sliding smoothly off of the seat while one of her gangmates leans on the handlebars. A redheaded girl Kohaku doesn’t immediately recognize.

“Alright, Fukuzawa,” the Fujiwara leader approaches the site with her bokken at her side and a fresh bruise on her cheek. As she steps over the threshold into the Bleeding Zone, a hulking red oni with a cheerful smile appears beside her, massive club draped across her shoulders. “…” Momofuku looks into the fire. “I see you’re in the middle of something. I can wait.”

“It’s finished,” Kohaku spares one more look at the ashes of the jacket. “But I appreciate the respect. What do you want?”

“I just finished cleaning up once mess,” reaching out her arm, she jabs the bokken into Kohaku’s chest. The wounds there have already been mended by Jinko’s Idolon powers. “Now everyone’s losing their shit, and it all started with Yuki Hajime! You know something, Fukuzawa, now spit it out!”

Stuffing both hands into his pockets, Kohaku leans his head back, exposing his throat to the ‘blade.’ “Everyone? Who’s everyone?”

“Everyone! I’ve spent too long making peace between all these misfits to watch them collapse on my watch!” the Delinquent Queen shouts. “I mean everyone! Every old grudge, every buried hatchet, it’s all getting dug up and buried in someone’s back! This has Idea World all over it and you were squirrely as hell earlier, so I want to know what you know. And why the hell is Prez here?!”

Shu Jinko puts on a sad smile and waves. “Hey, Momo.”

“Shut up, I was talking to Fukuzawa!” spinning the bokken over her head, she smacks it into Shu’s foot.

“Ah, ow!” grabbing the injured digits, Shu hops around, narrowly avoiding a hop into the bonfire several times.

Looking up at the clear night sky above, Kohaku thinks it over. “All the old beef,” he says, remembering what Yuki had said. “I fought a pair of Ideas the other day. One of them was defeated, but I didn’t get the chance to Slay it. It shouldn’t have regained that much power this swiftly, but…” he lowers his gaze, locking eyes with Momofuku. “I felt its name. Gang Violence.”

Closing Credit Roll

The moon falls below the horizon, and the glare of the sun rises over the Kageoka skyline. A boy with tired eyes sits up in bed and glances at the alarm clock. Wisps trail through the air as the world of darkness fades.
There is a pile of photographs on the table. Rough-looking youth, with strange grainy silhouettes around or beside them, laughing, toasting cups and chopsticks as they share a meal together. The boy takes one and looks at it fondly, then shuffles them away into a drawer.
Cut to the street, where he walks with a coffee in his hand. He stands at the gates of Higan Academy, back to the viewer. He casts one last glance over his shoulder, as the ghostly outline of a serpent flickers briefly in the air. Looking into the camera, he sips his drink and steps through the doors.
Fade to black.